SynAging Announces Collaboration with MTI-GlobalStem

SynAging, Nancy, France has announced its collaboration with MTI-GlobalStem, Gaithersburg, MD, USA, a provider of human induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells and optimized neuronal differentiation reagents and protocols. This collaboration, which started in 2014, has resulted in SynAging’s highly reproducible neuroprotection assays on human neurons for drug developers in AD and PD.

SynAging has subsequently developed assays which treat these human neuronal cultures with its established amyloid beta oligomers (AbO) and alpha-synuclein oligomers (aSO) that have well established neurodegenerative properties in rodent primary neurons, mimicking AD and PD, respectively. Highly reproducible neurodegeneration is induced rapidly in these human cultures and neurons are rescued in a dose dependent manner - e.g. by BDNF, a known blocker of neuronal apoptosis.

Dr. Thierry Pillot, CEO and CSO of SynAging, commented: “This new assay system allows our clients to test their drug candidates on human neurons and targets first. Thus very early in drug discovery ‘on human target’ effects can be validated in vitro, including in target knockdown experiments, reducing the downstream risks in development. As is the case with our rodent cultures, the in vitro assays with human neurons permit an initial evaluation of disease modifying properties of novel compounds prior to potential evaluation in our well established in vivo mouse cognition models. We are very grateful to MTI-GlobalStem for their enthusiasm and support of this joint project!”

Dr. Jonathan Auerbach, CTO of MTI-GlobalStem Inc. replied: “It was a pleasure working with Thierry and his team at SynAging. They performed very thorough and valuable work using our human iPSC-derived (HIPTM) neurons. We are very excited by their success as this is true validation of the utility of our HIPTM Neuron platform for use in drug development and screening. SynAging’s results, together with functional synaptic, electrophysiological and imaging data from other collaborators and our own R&D team, demonstrate the strength and relevance of this system.”

A study by UCLA researchers is the first to demonstrate a technique for coaxing pluripotent stem cells — which can give rise to every cell type in the body and which can be grown indefinitely in the lab — into becoming mature T cells capable of killing tumor cells.